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Introduction: Benefits, risks, and the increasing popularity of yoga use warrant assessing yoga practice prevalence and users' profiles. This study describes trends in yoga practice exclusively among American adults from 2002 to 2017, compares the profile of yoga users, and identifies factors related to yoga use over time. Materials and Methods: This study is a secondary analysis done in 2019 and 2020 using the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) 2002, 2007, 2012, and 2017 data. Population weights were used to obtain statistically accurate estimates of yoga use prevalence for the U.S. population. Descriptive statistics were used to profile the sociodemographic and health-related characteristics of yoga users. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with yoga use in each cohort defined by the NHIS year. Results: Yoga practice prevalence nearly tripled from 5.1% in 2002 to 13.7% in 2017 (weighted estimate 10,386,456 and 32,761,194 American adults, respectively). Typical yoga users were young non-Hispanic single white female adults with bachelor or higher education and health insurance, and resided in the west region of the United States. Yoga use pattern change over time was significantly related to only younger age (p < 0.001) but not to other sociodemographic or health-related factors. Conclusions: Yoga has gained increasing popularity in the past two decades among American adults, with younger adults being the driving force. Yoga appears to be adopted for general well-being or prevention more than for specific disease treatment. Future research should evaluate how yoga can be effectively and safely integrated into preventive medicine strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign- and U.S.-born Hispanic health deteriorates with increasing exposure and acculturation to mainstream U.S. society. Because these associations are robust to (static) socioeconomic controls, negative acculturation has become their primary explanation. This overemphasis, however, has neglected important alternative structural explanations. Examining Hispanic mortality using the 1998-2006 U.S. National Health Interview Survey-Linked Mortality File according to nativity, immigrant adaptation measures, and health behaviors, this study presents indirect but compelling evidence that suggests negative acculturation is not the only or main explanation for this deterioration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Previous studies find U.S. immigrants have weaker socioeconomic gradients in health relative to non-Hispanic Whites and their U.S.-born co-ethnics. Several explanations have been advanced but few have been tested empirically. We use data from the Mexican Family Life Survey and the U.S. National Health Interview Survey, including longitudinal data in the former measuring socioeconomic status (SES) and health previous to emigration, to test if (1) immigrants “import” their gradients from the sending country, or if (2) they may be changing as a result of SES-graded acculturation among Mexican migrant men in two health indicators: obesity and current smoking. We find evidence consistent with the first hypothesis: the gradients of migrants measured prior to coming to the U.S. are not statistically different from those of nonmigrants, as the gradients of each are relatively weak. Although the gradients for obesity and smoking appear to weaken with time spent in the U.S., the differences are not significant, suggesting little support for the selective acculturation hypothesis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]